Center Channel Speaker Question

I had the LM-1's. Best speaker B & W ever made. Your problem is very common. There's a huge demand placed on a center channel. It has to keep up with the 2 main speakers and sometimes, even a sub. To get an idea of what I am talking about, listen to some music using just your front 2 speakers. Unplug one of your speakers and listen again. Its a huge loss. It seems like more than 50%. That's what your center channel has to compete with. For me, the best way to handle a center channel is to not use one or to use a regular pair of stereo speakers. Basically, a center channel is pretty much the same as a mono channel. If you buy another pair of LM-1's and put one on each side of the screen, it will float a perfect center image, just like a mono recording. Also, the LM-1's are very easy to drive. You should be able to get away with using just 1 channel on your amp for both speakers.

"Sorry to disagree, but B&W states the impedance of the LM1 as 8 ohms with a minimum of 3 ohms. Using a pair on a single channel will result in a 4 ohm impedance with a minimum of 1.5 ohms. The recommended minimum impedance for the SR-6004 is 6 ohms. It just seems too risky, mainly because of the severe drop to 1.5 ohms. I would talk to Marantz tech support before attempting to use a pair of LM1’s on the center channel."

Not if you wire them in series. Also, if you use 2 speakers, you won't need as much volume. It will definitely work.

Its easy enough to test what I'm talking about here. The OP can just take the pair of LM-1's that he already has and hook them up to one channel on his amp, and do some listening.

"Am I correct in understanding that all I need do is use center channel wire, hook up 1st LM1 and continue wire to 2nd LM1 effectively wiring in series? If the result is not pleasing then I can fall back to using 1st LM1 as center."

No, that's parallel. You can try it that way but your amp may strain a little. For series do this: 1. Connect a speaker cable from the + on your amp to the + on one of the speakers. 2. Connect a speaker cable from the - on your amp to the - on the other speaker. 3. Run a speaker cable from one speaker to the other connecting it to the unused binding posts.

As far as the volume issue goes, I meant that using 2 speakers for the center will take the demand off 1 speaker used as a center. That's why I suggested the test in my first post. Listen to some music just using your main L and R front speakers. After a minute or so, just unplug 1 of the speakers and listen to it. If you do that, you will see immediately what I am talking about. Just listening to the 1 speaker play music, you will see how hard that single speaker has to work to keep up with the main 2. Its just a rough test. When you are watching a movie, different info is sent to the center channel, so the test isn't 100%. That said, its still a very good indicator as to how the front and center speakers interact with each other.